A look inside a whole foods freezer

One of Michael Pollan’s many Food Rules that I love is “If you have the space, buy a freezer.” We took Pollan’s advice and bought a separate freezer (pictured below) that has allowed us to stock up on good sources of local meat as well as lots of other stuff. My three favorite things to store in our extra freezer are the following…

1. Ingredients that would otherwise go rancid

You see, just last year I was cooking with white flour (don’t remind me!) and that wonderful white, fluffy stuff could just sit on my pantry shelf for years and never spoil. In fact, that was one of the reasons so long ago that manufacturers started making white flour as opposed to the whole-wheat variety. It’s hard to beat that shelf life! It actually reminds me of one of Pollan’s other Food Rules “Eat only food that will eventually rot.” He also says “The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is.” That just sounds so appetizing doesn’t it!?

So the moral of this story is that when you buy nutritious ingredients like whole-wheat flour and other whole grains it is best to store them in the freezer (or at least the fridge). The same goes for things like nuts and seeds. We even keep our unsweetened coconut, extra local goat cheese, homemade whole-wheat breadcrumbs, and extra loaves of sandwich bread in there, too.

2. Meat that we stock up on at the Farmer’s Market or our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm partnership